Testing IMAP

You have already finished the configuration of Dovecot so fetching emails using the IMAP protocol will already work. Let’s give it a try using a simple but powerful IMAP client: mutt.

mutt -f imaps://john@example.org@webmail.example.org

The connection URL may look a little confusing because of the two “@” characters. Usually mutt expects the format imaps://user@server. And as we use the email address as the “user” part you get this look.

You should get prompted for the password which is “summersun”. If you get any certificate warnings then check if you used the correct server name to connect to and if you finished the certificate/LetsEncrypt part earlier in this guide.

After logging in you will see an empty inbox:

Very good – so IMAP connections and authentication works. Exit mutt by pressing “q”.

I see my current mail server has default_pass_scheme = SHA512
This IMAP test only succeeds If i add that to dovecot-sql.conf.ext.

Other than having all my users reset their passwords, am I safe to just leave this scheme as-is? Also, do i need to make changes elsewhere to ensure all future accounts have a consistent password scheme?

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